This is a photo journey of Team Newschoolers scouting urban features for the Jon Olsson Super Sessions in Åre, Sweden. Throughout J.O.S.S. each team battles to find fresh, untapped urban features that have not been hit in past year’s events; since Åre is a small town this can be very challenging, especially since we had no vehicle other than the occasional taxi available to haul a generator and gear to our final destination. During the event, all of the teams display courtesy for each other by not hitting a feature if they know another team has already hit it that year; because of this, teams have to get their urban done early on in the event and get creative with features, distinguishing themselves from past competitors. Here they are, as we found them, in chronological order over the course of our first two days in Sweden.

——————Hmm…how desperate will we get for fresh urban in Åre——————
—————————–Think anyone will mind if we borrow this?—————————
———————————————–Damn, no snow———————————————–
——————————Okay…who is feeling really ambitious——————————–
—————————This could have been interesting (no snow)—————————–
—————————————–Some tires and palettes?—————————————
—————–Recognize this from Sammy C’s 2008 winning JOSS edit?——————
———————————————Long Wooden Rail——————————————–
—————If you were LJ Strenio, you’d actually consider doing this rail—————
————————–Skinny skinny short downrail right downtown————————–
————————————A couple cool wallride options————————————
——————————————–Major jib potential——————————————–
—————Walker ponders how realistic it would be to thread the needle—————
–This massive water tower bomb drop seemed intimidating at first, 2 feet of snow melted away when they went to hit it—————————————————————
————————————–These things are everywhere————————————
———Team Norway must have been stoked when they found this last year———
——————————————–Mediocre wood rail——————————————–
—————————————–Urban stepdown zone——————————————
—–LJ and Gus simultaneously discover the sickest feature ever (next pic below)—–
———————————Scoping the “three-shot” potential———————————
——————Team NS thinking of the seemingly endless posibilities——————
———————–Sick wallride+mystery feature (next year maybe?)———————–
————————————————“Urban” hip————————————————
——————————–You’ve seen this in past JOSS videos——————————–
——This “urban” cliff drop would have required a saw and a lot of work, vetoed——
–“How the hell has no one hit this before?”/”Do you think someone other than us will try to hit it this year?”—————————————————————————–
——————–Deep thoughts with Matt Walker and Gus Kenworthy——————–
———————————–Just blending in with the locals———————————–
——————This time we opted to take the trolley like civilized folks——————
——————————WHOA!!Force is strong with this one——————————
–They thanked me later when they learned I had wire cutters in my camera bag (Don’t worry we fixed it when we were done)——————————————————
——Hope we don’t get this desperate (train tracks as urinated on in Chug Life)——
———————————Dreamy closeout we never got to hit——————————–
–Something sick would have happened here with a winch if JOSS was a little longer———————————————————————————————————